Postpartum Care Plan Builder

What a postpartum doula does

BBU’s postpartum training describes the role as supporting the entire household: helping parents recover physically and emotionally, hands on baby care (holding, soothing, feeding, bathing, diapering and caring for baby), supporting sleep, routines and safety on overnight shifts so parents can rest, feeding support including families with twins or multiples, and knowing when to refer a family to the right resource. The builder’s care areas use those same headings, so the plan you print describes the job the way the training teaches it.

Daytime and overnight shifts

Enter how many daytime and overnight shifts a week you have agreed and how long each is. The builder adds up hours per week and across the whole engagement, then shows what each care area looks like on a day shift and on a night shift. Overnight support centers on letting parents sleep: settling, diapering and bringing the baby for feeds. Day shifts make room for rest, meals and showers and for showing parents the care skills they want to practice.

Care areas and handovers

Each care area has a weekly handover line: what the family wants more or less help with, how rest is going, what parents now do confidently, the routine as it stands, feeding questions to take to their provider or lactation consultant, and resources shared. A first week focused on settling in and a final week focused on handing over routines bookend the week-by-week outline.

Setting expectations with a family

A printed plan helps everyone agree on the same picture before the baby comes home. It is a planning document, not a contract or a price quote: the builder does not suggest rates. It is also deliberately non-clinical. Medical questions about the parent or the baby and feeding plans belong to the family’s own provider or lactation consultant, and the plan says so in its “Outside this plan” box.

Using the plan through the engagement

Print the plan for the family before the baby comes home and keep a copy yourself. At each weekly handover, go through the care areas together: what is working, what the family wants more or less of, and anything to pass on to their provider or lactation consultant. If the shift pattern changes, enter the new numbers and print an updated plan so everyone is looking at the same page. Pair it with the free Postpartum Shift & Feeding Log to record each shift.